Saudi Arabia, UAE send troops to support Kurds in Syria

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have sent military forces to areas controlled by the Kurdish YPG group in north-east Syria, Turkey’s Yenisafak newspaper reported.

The paper said the forces will be stationed with US-led coalition troops and will support its tasks with huge military enforcements as well as heavy and light weapons.

Quoting the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the newspaper reported that a convoy of troops belonging to an Arab Gulf state recently arrived in the contact area between the Kurdish PKK/YPG and Daesh in the Deir Ez-Zor countryside.

This comes at a time when Ankara is preparing to launch an expanded military operation with the Free Syrian Army against the Kurdish PKK group in the northeast of Syria.

Saudi and Emirati military advisers have in recent months met with officials of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), considered by Turkey as terrorist organisations, at the US base in north-east Syria.

There are fears of Arab-Turkish confrontations that will be the first of their kind on Syrian soil.

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